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On Greek text crit

It has been noted here many times before that BibleWorks currently lacks the critical apparatus for the NA27 and BHS because the license holders for those works have not agreed to any licensing deals with BibleWorks. However it has also been said that despite not having the NA27 app crit specifically, there still are many other valuable tools for text crit in BW8 such as Von Soden and Tischendorf. Although both are older than NA27, they both contain much more information and often more accurate information. It is sad BW can't have everything in it, but the fact that it has those two really means it has more and better information than the NA27 itself. If you don't believe me, these are the words of the editors of the NA27, "(von Soden and Tischendorf) are indispensible for specialized studies on the transmission of particular texts and passages because (unfortunately) they still represent the most detailed collect of variants (von Soden) and the most accurate presentation of the evidence from them (Tischendorf) available today." (From Peter Head's review of Editio Critica Maior). So I'd say that's pretty much straight from the horse's mouth. Of course it should be noted that the Editio Critica Maior when it's finished should replace both von Soden and Tischendorf, but the point is, that edition would essentially be superseding von Soden and Tisch, not NA27.

Agreed, but sometimes people need talking Heads to drive that point home

True. Formal announcements by formally credentialed people makes a bigger splash in the headlines, but the only problem with formal statements is that they come about ten or fifteen years too late.

As of the late 90's, I was only the living human on the planet who had personally collated Vaticanus B and Sinaiticus Aleph and Codex Bezae and a few other manuscripts in the New Testament. Nobody else had claimed to have done so. My main fault was not organizing my collations into one manageable unit and publishing it. Instead, my collations are scattered through a whole slew of BibleWorks notes and Excel and Word documents. Back then, you'll remember, I had to use real books with the text of these manuscripts and do everything by hand.

In any case, I was vociferous back then about the legions of errors in the NA/UBS Critical Apparatus, and the extraordinarily sparse and misleading coverage of those two works. That drew a lot of snickers at the time.

But then Reuben Swanson came out with his collations and totally corroborated everything I had been saying. Since Swanson, others have done the same.

Swanson's quotes and a very small example of the avalanches of errors of those works can be seen in my article on 1 Timothy 3:16 here --

In fact, there is not a person on this planet who is more familiar with the actual TEXT of Vaticanus B and Sinaiticus Aleph than me. I'm not talking about the paleography, for many have delved more deeply into that in recent years, but as for the actual TEXT, I know it backwards and forwards.

I have literally lived with those two manuscripts and their manifest corruptions for many years now, in addition to studying the collations of others, such as Hoskier, Burgon, Swanson, as well as the various textual anaysis' that have been conducted on them by others.

And I could add much more besides.

And that's why I'll say right now that this new work that is reportedly forthcoming will not change the landscape hardly at all. The same gross errors of B and Aleph will continue to live on, and the same blindness that brought forth the NA/UBS will only be perpetuated in this new edition, even though it may have a much more glittering appearance than its predecessors, if and when it ever sees the light of day.

For the fact is, all the new editions in the world will never obscure the FACT that B and Aleph are so INFESTED with grammatical and phililogical solecisms that they LITERALLY cannot be counted, as well as their legions upon legions of other problems.

Which means, of course, that if B and Aleph are true representatives of the autographa, then Paul, and Luke, and Matthew, and John, et cetera, were the most unskilled writers that the Greek language has ever known, and were as well the biggest buffoons in the entire history of all of Greek literature, not only with regard to plain, simple, schooboy Greek, but also with regard to the geography of the regions they wrote about, its history, and numerous other categories, a number of which I've written about, just as I wrote about this matter ten or fifteen years ago.

Some other resources for text critical work

For Greek NT text critical work, I do consult the NA27 apparatus (in Logos), but there is still quite a bit available in BW.

As already noted, Tischendorf and von Soden are easily available.

In addition to the resource modules, there are the texts themselves of TIS and VST and also WHO (Westcott/Hort) and TRG (Tregelles) along with the various Byzantine/Majority Text ones. (Cf. the versions page.)

Wieland Willker has done an excellent job with the Gospels. Cf. the Old in the New modules page to get it for integration w/in BW. Free!

While there, you can also get images of the mss themselves: Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, Alexandrinus, Bezae...

Using ERMIE, link to this excellent resource at LaParola. You can use this database in the LaParola program, but EVEN BETTER, note on that page the downloadable CHM files. Either one can be unzipped into your BW database folder and show up properly linked to the texts in your Resource tab of the analysis window.

BTW: Michael or Jim: It doesn't appear that the LaParola databases are in the Old in the New collection. Pasquale is the one who compiled the CHM files. These are incredibly helpful and worth highlighting.

BTW: Michael or Jim: It doesn't appear that the LaParola databases are in the Old in the New collection. Pasquale is the one who compiled the CHM files. These are incredibly helpful and worth highlighting.

Which particular file do you mean? I know there were some files that although we thought were valuable, we weren't entirely sure they would not be infringing on some sort of copyright rules. Also I don't know about Jim's life status, but I've found my free-time match finally at school, so I know I've desperately fallen behind adding materials to the blog, so I can certainly take the blame on that account.

Since this database only has variants it is not using the base NA27/UBS text at all.
I checked a number of passages, and it does not duplicate the variant database of NA27. It omits some. On others it provides more information, especially in terms of the early Church Fathers.
>> I'm thinking it's clear...

Well, I can't figure out how to type Greek or Hebrew with this new board, so I'll transliterate.

And here is the inherent problem with the various apparatusus. See if you can deduce that this is the text of Vaticanus B in John 1:13 from any of them...

"oi ouk ex anqhpwpwn oude ek qelamatoj sarkoj all ek qeou egenhqhsan"

In other words, Vaticanus B reads "not from man or from the will of the flesh but born of God"

IOW, in addition to missing almost half of the phrase, the word anqhrwpwn is substituted for androj, not to mention orthagraphic and other differences in this one clause.

And this type of thing could be multiplied LITERALLY EXPONTIALLY with regard to deducing a manuscript reading from the apparatuses, especially with regard to the infinite number of vagaries in B and Aleph. And I mean EXPONENTIALLY X EXPONENTIALLY X EXPONENTIALLY.

If we're ever going to get an another apparatus into BW, I still vote that something get worked out with Swanson, and I know about all the problems there, but still, at least with Swanson you get to see what the manuscript actually says instead of LEGIONS UPON LEGIONS UPON LEGIONS WORLD WITHOUT END of missing data.

(2) It is difficult or impossible to discover the above information from the commonly accepted apparati.(3) The current apparati do not provide enough data about the manuscripts they site(4) Therefore, the current apparati may be misleading(5) There are errors in the apparati

Text Critical Work and BW

Just to chime in briefly: we are still scheduled to include the New Orleans Baptist Seminary apparatus when they are finished with the current round of edits. The BibleWorks manuscript project is also still progressing, albeit much more slowly than I would like. The initial offering of 7 of the most important manuscripts should be released by the end of the year. They will be free of charge to BW8 users, though we may need to charge a media fee for discs with manuscript images. Also keep in mind, as has been said, that Tischenfdorf is a gold mine, and that most major textual issues suface with a simple comparision of the NA27 and Robinson-Pierpont texts. Oh, yeah, we also have brand new proofs of the Westcott-Hort text and the Scrivener texts to release soon. These should be about as accurate as anyone can get them, much better than what we or anyone else has now. So there's lots of TC stuff in the pipeline and it won't cost you a penny extra - except possibly for the NOBTS stuff - I am not sure if we were able to work out a royalty low enough for us to put it in the base package - if not the price will be reasonable - they are good guys.